Gambling Memoir

Stuart Wheeler went to Eton and Oxford. He was an officer in the Welsh Guards, a barrister, an investment banker, and a major donor to the Conservative Party. You might think that he has led a life of impeccably conformist upper-class respectability. You’d be wrong. For Wheeler is also an illegitimate child adopted at the age of two and a devoted gambler who has been thrown out of more than one Las Vegas casino. He gave William Hague’s Conservatives £5 million (still the biggest political donation in British history) before being expelled from the Tories and joining UKIP.

Most of us think of bowling as a "sport" in quotation marks, and bowling alleys are places with disco balls, matching shirts, and funny shoes. But in the 1960s, New York City was the center of "action bowling", a form of high-stakes gambling in which bowlers - often teenagers - faced off for thousands of dollars every night. When money like that is changing hands, you can bet the pressure is on (and the balls are rigged), and losses come with dire consequences.

Explore the fascinating and frightening world of organized crime! Are you fascinated by the Mafia? Have you always wondered how these groups operate? Do you want to know the ugly truth about the Mafia’s serial killers? You'll learn about the most influential and famous organized crime groups in the world. You’ll also discover why the Italian mafia was invited to help the Italian government! And why that turned out to be a very, very, very bad idea....

Prohibition. Mobsters, murder, and mayhem. FBI agents. Cops, robbers, and worse. Sound like the background for a Hollywood epic? It's Ernest Marquez's latest very true story of the renowned gambling ships that anchored in Santa Monica Bay in the 1920s and 1930s. It's the story of Tony Cornero, the cockiest gangster who ever bootlegged a bottle of scotch, the man who helped found Las Vegas, and the smooth operator of the most glamorous gambling ship in the Pacific, the Rex.